Jefferson, Degeneracy and Obama

Thomas Jefferson was no George Washington, but he was nonetheless quite a brilliant member of the Founding Fathers and perhaps the most gifted writer of the group. One of the things about which he expressed his opinion most often was the subject of debt as it affected the new United States of America.

As Jefferson said in a letter to Samuel Kercheval, written in the early 19th Century:

"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers."

It is nothing short of astonishing how prescient these men were. Thomas Jefferson went on in yet another missive to Kercheval, clearly an effective sounding board for Jefferson in his thoughts regarding debt:

"[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression."

Before the advent of the Obama Administration, one might have found the words “wretchedness” and “oppression” to be a bit hyperbolic. After the past year and a quarter, however, understatement fills the bill more accurately. In his life-long harangue against debt, Jefferson also said, in a letter to James Madison, written in the late 18th Century:

"…Then I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence."

And, again to Madison, later in the same year:

"[it can be determined that] the half of those of 21 years and upwards living at any one instant of time will be dead in 18 years, 8 months, or say 19 years as the nearest integral number. Then 19 years is the term beyond which neither the representatives of a nation nor even the whole nation itself assembled can validly extend a debt… With respect to future debts, would it not be wise and just for [a] nation to declare in [its] constitution that neither the legislature nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years? And that all future contracts shall be deemed void as to what shall remain unpaid at the end of 19 years from their date?":It is with this amazing degree of specificity that this Founding Father railed against debt and what, if not effectively managed and dispensed with, the incalculable damage it would do to our nation and its future generations. Thomas Jefferson concluded, in another letter to Madison:

"The conclusion then, is, that neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled, can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time."

Do you think our educated betters in the Obama Administration have just been too busy trying to dismantle the United States of America that they just haven’t had time to read any of the writings of one of the greatest of our Founding Fathers? In their defense, the destruction of a nation, especially the greatest one in the world, is a rather time-consuming process.

It’s quite a shame that with all the trillions Obama has stolen from us and our descendants and ferreted to his friends and supporters in the SEIU and various other labor unions, trial lawyers, Acorn and many, many more such institutions, that they couldn’t have carved out a bit for remedial education for those at the executive branch. It really is a pity; they might have actually learned how the United States of America is supposed to be run.

Not these guys. What this crew has accomplished in less than a year in a half is nothing short of astonishing. Even liberals are getting nervous about the long-term fiscal situation created by their leader (from the Congressional Budget Office):

“To put it bluntly, the fiscal policy of the United States is unsustainable. Debt is growing faster than gross domestic product. Under the CBO’s most realistic scenario, the publicly held debt of the U.S. government will reach 82 percent of GDP by 2019 — roughly double what it was in 2008. By 2026, spiraling interest payments would push the debt above its all-time peak (set just after World War II) of 113 percent of GDP. It would reach 200 percent of GDP in 2038.”

What all this gobbledygook means is that we are broke. We are actually and terrifyingly quite beyond broke.

Our current debt under President Barack Hussein Obama is approximately $13 trillion. This is before the projected massive spending of Obama’s just proffered budget; before his just proffered $1 trillion plus health care proposal and his 2nd stimulus proposal (AKA jobs bill), among other executive and legislative monstrosities on the part of the Obama Administration. This radical leftist masquerading as a real American President has tripled our national debt in just a year and a quarter, with multitudinous promises, and threats, of much more to come.

This sum, growing by the day under Barack Hussein Obama, is the largest debt that this nation has seen in its history, by far. Those currently ruling this nation simply do not care. It is clear that the debt they are incurring for us, and for our future generations, is of little significance to them. What is resulting from this extraordinary irresponsibility, or purposeful destructive intent, on the part of Obama is a massive government takeover of the United States of America.

And this group continues to come up with new ways to spend money that we do not have, and will most certainly do the same for the next 3 and three quarter years. Explicit tax hikes are occurring at the same time that numerous stealth tax increases are being put into place. It was recently said in the Wall Street Journal that in the first term of President Barack Hussein Obama (God help us if there are any more than one) “a middle-aged two-career couple in NY or CA could get a tax bill as big as their mortgage.” And that is just the beginning of what this Administration wants to achieve, at the same time increasing the debt, and using that debt as an excuse to increase taxes on all Americans, exponentially.

Thomas Jefferson must have known that someone might come along in future to lead the nation, through a negative and tragic combination of factors, to its possible destruction. Just over 220 years later, Barack Hussein Obama, through a lying media, a completely fake and construct of a candidate, unending and illegally provided campaign funds and a too-trusting American citizenry, among other horrible things, became the President of the United States of America in 2009. As a result of this unfortunate election result, this ‘misalliance’ of leadership, that would prove to come close to effectively destroying the United States of America as created by its founders, was in fact foreseen by one of the most extraordinary of our Founders; voila:

“Ought not then the right of each successive generation to be guaranteed against the dissipations and corruptions of those preceding, by a fundamental provision in our Constitution? And if that has not been made, does it exist the less, there being between generation and generation as between nation and nation no other law than that of nature? And is it the less dishonest to do what is wrong because not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy, and that in instituting the system of finance to be hereafter pursued we shall adopt the only safe, the only lawful and honest one, of borrowing on such short terms of reimbursement of interest and principal as will fall within the accomplishment of our own lives."

Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, “degeneracy” about says it all for this Administration.